Winter's Gift
by Freya'sDaughter
Summary: Hiccup's in for a surprise one particular snowy evening when he comes home for supper. Oneshot-for now. Mild spoilers for HTTYD 2.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hi, y'all. This is my version of how this conversation might go, based on my headcanon. I haven't got a post-"Firsts" plot yet, so don't expect this to turn into anything. Yet. _

Winter's Gift

Astrid leaned over the steaming pot of boiling mutton and vegetables and gave it another stir. She breathed out hard and turned her face away as the mixture gave off a particularly unpleasant gaseous belch. It _looked _done. One couldn't be sure. No matter how many times she'd sought her mother's input in the past, her impression of the correct version of the dish always seemed to flee her mind when it was needed most.

It didn't _smell _very good, that was for certain. But that wasn't much of an indication either. Everything had been smelling horrible to her lately, except herbal tea, and she'd lost so much weight that Hiccup had gotten worried and made her promise she'd go to Gothi. She finally had, this morning, and she now knew why she'd been off her food. She felt stupid for even having wondered. Hiccup would owe her big for cooking something like this in her state.

She pulled the pot away from the fire slightly to reduce the temperature and sat down to wait for her husband. He was in another interminable meeting; the sort of thing he'd spoken of to her with such dread just a few months ago on Itchy Armpit. He always came back tired and stony-faced, and she'd tried to get him to clue her in on the details of the meetings but he was never up to giving her more than a brief overview before picking through his supper and falling into bed.

She could usually hear his stomach growling when he came in the door, but she couldn't figure out why he always left so much of his food uneaten. And he was still such a twig, too, despite her best attempts to put some more meat on his bones. Most Viking men filled out in their late teens and early twenties, but Hiccup had retained his slender, slightly elfin build. He had finally achieved a few inches on her in recent years (a fact which gratified him to a degree that amused her a great deal), but when she hugged him he still felt narrow, almost fragile, in her arms, even though she knew he possessed a depth of strength and will that rivaled that of even the most gargantuan Viking warrior.

She reached over for the bag that held her needlework and pulled out a skein of worsted yarn and a needle. She opened her fingers up and curved them as though holding a large ball, trying to picture the approximate size of the item she'd be making. She'd need to make a lot of things. It would be boring. Maybe her mother still had some pieces she could have as hand-me-downs. She sighed and started working the yarn around, creating a flat disk that would serve as the top of the—

Hiccup came in through the door suddenly, followed by a gust of wind and snow. Astrid shivered and put her little project back in the bag. She stood up and walked around the hearth to the entrance of the hut; she reached out and took her husband's heavy mittens and hat as he removed them. She gave them a gentle slap to remove the snow and hung them on the pegs near the door.

"Hi, babe." She combed her fingers through his flattened hat hair, fluffing the choppy strands and pulling out bits of ice at the back. "Long meeting?"

He nodded and winced, and started to undo the fastenings of his coat. "Worst of the season. Jorgenson's insufferable, keeps trying to throw his weight around like usual. Now I understand why my dad kept him close by. It wasn't because they're related—it was to keep an eye on him."

He pulled off the heavy coat and hung it up. Astrid stepped closer to him, inspecting his face in the reddish, flickering light that came from the hearth. He smiled at her tightly; she could tell he was glad to be home but that he hadn't yet been able to shake off the lingering worries of the meeting. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his chest, resting her face into his shoulder, feeling the chill that had reached his clothes even through his heavy overcoat. Devastating Winter would be upon them soon; by Snoggletog they'd be close to snowed in.

He gave her a firm squeeze and kissed her forehead before pulling back, turning away suddenly and coughing into his arm.

"Oh, no, you don't," she said sharply. "Not this year." She grabbed his hand, tugged him toward the hearth and pushed him into a chair, throwing a blanket at him on her way to collect a bowl and spoon from the corner where they kept their cooking supplies.

"Wouldn't dare," he said. "Loki only knows who I'd find running the show after I'd recovered."

He bent forward to peer at the mess bubbling in the pot. "Is that…mutton?"

Astrid shot him an exasperated look. "Of course it is. Can't you tell?" His lips gave an uncertain twitch; his eyes looked around the room everywhere except at her and she growled under her breath as she dished up a chunk of meat and covered it with broth and cooked carrots.

He took the bowl, and she sat down and retrieved her new project from the bag. She worked the yarn around and around, watching him suspiciously as he blew on the bowl's contents way longer than he should have needed to. Finally he took a bite and gulped it down.

"How is it?" she asked.

"It's…not your best," he answered, his attempt at diplomacy falling flat on her ears. His careful, reserved pronouncements might be effective in negotiating a truce between feuding sheep farmers but she knew him too well to be fooled by his hedging.

"Hmmph," she said, aggrieved. The smell was making her feel horrible too, but she wasn't going to say it. "I tried, okay? I'm sorry, I spent my teen years learning how to throw an axe, and following you around on our stupid adventures…"

His expression crumpled a bit and she knew she'd said too much. Something about Hiccup just destroyed the filter between her brain and her mouth. She loved him…maybe that's why she couldn't seem to stop sticking her finger into the cracks in his ego. Sometimes it resulted in spurring him on to feats of greatness…and sometimes it just made him look weary and deflated.

He picked at the vegetables a bit, then looked up at her, the wavering orange glow from the fire emphasizing the tired circles under his eyes.

"Aren't you having any?" he asked.

"No…" she said. "I, um, ate earlier." Darn him, he could read her, too; he rolled his eyes and she knew he wasn't buying it.

"Nice try. What's the matter? If you don't get your appetite back, _you'll _be the one getting sick, and we can't afford to lose your skills, either. There are still way too many dragons crawling all over Berk unaccounted for, and my mom can't deal with all of them on her own. Not without the Alpha who knew them all best."

Astrid nodded, seizing the chance to change the subject. "Where is she, anyway? Is she coming back for supper?"

He shook his head. "She's eating at the Ingermans' tonight. Fishlegs' mom has been trying to get her caught up with what's happened on Berk since she…left. All the weddings, funerals, births…" His gaze caught on Astrid's handiwork. "What's that you're making?"

Astrid's already queasy stomach did a somersault; she gulped down saliva and took a breath.

"It's a…baby hat."

"Oh," he said, and took another bite of vegetables. He swallowed hard and grimaced. "Whose baby?"

When Astrid didn't respond for a moment, he lowered the bowl to his lap and leaned forward, sensitive brows angled downward in concern.

"Astrid? Are you okay?"

She blinked. "Yeah. Sorry. What did you say?"

"I said, whose baby are you making the hat for?"

She looked at him, feeling suddenly shy as she glimpsed the intensity in his large green eyes. He had a knack for looking as though he could see right through her, and he was turning the expression on full force.

"Ours."

His face opened in shock, then he forcibly closed his mouth. "Oh!" He looked away and flushed; he turned back toward her and bit his lip. "Well, that explains a lot."

He set the bowl down on the hearth and Astrid's heart sank as he rubbed his face with his hands. He didn't look at her.

"Aren't…aren't you happy about it?" she ventured finally. _He'd better be happy about it_, she thought, _it was at least half his doing. _

"Yeah!" he said, but it was in the tone of voice he often used when she asked him how he'd liked her latest recipe for yaknog. Based on her mentally recorded history of the behavior that usually followed his answers, she knew that its meaning ranged from ambivalent to downright negative.

"Good," she said. "Gothi thinks I'm six weeks along or so, and will deliver around the time the snow melts." She turned her attention back to her needlework, biting down hard on her tongue to distract herself from the hot tears forming in her eyes. They weren't ready for a baby. They'd only been married a few months, and still didn't see as much of each other as they wanted to. Not for the first time, she wished they hadn't let Gobber and the others talk them into moving up their wedding date. The first two days of their marriage had been a complete disaster; they'd had a week off after that…sort of…and then it had been noses to the grindstone ever since. And now this. She wasn't even totally sure how they had managed it, given the number of times they'd actually been free and alert enough to be intimate with each other. Now she was going to grow to the size of a yak, and he wouldn't want to touch her at all.

Hel's bells, she was going to cry…

Hiccup finally took his hands away from his face when he heard her sniffle. He sprung up from the chair, the blanket falling on the ground as he knelt next to her. She was still attempting to work the pattern for the baby's hat; he pushed it down to her lap and covered her hands with one of his.

"I'm sorry, Astrid," he said. He brushed her bangs behind her ear and pulled her head sideways against his chest. "I was just…surprised, that's all. I'm happy about it, I really am. Shhh…" he held her face against him and kissed the top of her head as she gulped and sucked in sharp breaths of air. "Come on, let's go to bed."

"We…can't," she hiccupped. "I have to put the stew away, and bank the fire…"

"I'll take care of it. Go on, go upstairs."

Astrid stuffed her needlework back in the bag and swiped the tears from her face using her sleeve. She trudged up the steep stairs to their bedroom, too preoccupied with her own thoughts to see Hiccup still sitting where she had left him, staring blankly into the fire.

She was nearly asleep when he came in to bed, flailing and patting a bit as he changed in the near-darkness and crawled under the covers. He spooned up against her, his breath loud in her ear as he sorted out where their arms and legs went.

His hand rested on her hip for a minute, then tentatively reached under her sleep shift, pulling it up. He caressed her belly, his palm still warm from the nearness of the fire and the hot supper kettle.

"It'll be fine, Astrid," he murmured into her hair. "Look at all we've survived so far. This will be a piece of cake."

She responded with a soft half-sob, half-chuckle. "If you say so." She breathed out heavily and was quiet.

"We're…not naming it Hiccup, okay?" he said after a few more seconds.

She wiggled a bit, pressing herself closer against him under the blankets.

"I don't know," she said, "I kind of like it."

She reached down and took his hand, pulling it upward from her belly to clasp it tightly against her breastbone. He squeezed her hand in return, and nuzzled his face into the back of her head. They lay there silently in the dark for an hour, trying to examine the future, before they both fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: A lighthearted (mostly) follow-up to the last chapter. Whispers of subplot are ghosting through my brain._

_This chapter is rated a STRONG T for innuendo and snogging._

_000_

Astrid snuck downstairs in the morning silence, still in her night shift, avoiding the creaky third step from the bottom. She stepped quickly into her boots, braced herself and pulled open the front door of the Chief's house.

The world outside was a winter wonderland, the houses and trees and even the dragon tracks covered in an inch or two of fresh snow, but its magic was lost on her this morning. She stepped out onto the stoop, fell to her knees and retched. She hadn't eaten enough the previous evening for anything to come up, but that didn't stop her stomach from trying. She hung there for a moment, holding herself up with shaky arms, glad for the feeling of the cold, almost painful winter air against her face.

She got up and brushed the snow from her front. She went back into the house, hoping no one had seen her in such an obvious and compromising position. She didn't want anyone else to know yet; not so early on, when there was still a good chance she might lose the baby, but she had felt the nausea coming and had been loath to wake anyone inside.

Toothless opened an eyelid halfway to examine her from his nighttime post on the large, flat stone Stoick had put down for him as a bed years ago. Valka must have brought him in sometime after they'd gone to sleep. After the battle he'd taken to roaming the island protectively, only retiring for the night once he was sure everything was fine, that no unknown predators—human, dragon, or any other kind—lurked nearby. He snorted softly at Astrid before running his tongue over his dragon lips and re-settling.

Astrid looked around the ground floor of their house. It appeared that Hiccup had done more last night than just put away the supper materials. He'd folded the blanket she'd tossed at him, re-stacked the firewood, and wrapped the remnants of a bread loaf she'd forgotten about. Astrid's female relatives had warned her about the incorrigible untidiness of men, but Hiccup had proven an exception to the supposed rule. Then again, Hiccup had by this time started to make a career out of proving people's expectations of him wrong.

Last night, however…she had thought—hoped—he would be excited by the news that she was pregnant. Didn't all chiefs want offspring, especially sons? But he certainly hadn't reacted with overt enthusiasm. He'd hardly reacted at all, in fact; he hadn't so much as come over to touch her until she'd started crying, and then he had seemed more concerned with comforting her than with any thought of the pending addition to their family.

He had been kind about it later, though, snuggling and caressing her and whispering sweet encouraging things in her ear. She would have let him make love to her, even as tired and queasy as she was, but he'd just held her close until she'd felt the slackening in his limbs that meant sleep.

She still didn't know if he was genuinely happy about the baby or if he had just said those things to make her feel better.

_I should make breakfast, I guess. Hiccup didn't really eat last night, either. He's looking too thin, even for him. If I don't learn how to cook better, the other village women will take over out of pity. _The thought sparked a sense of shame in her breast, mixed with a hint of self-righteous anger. She hadn't had _time _to learn how to cook properly. At least, that's what she'd told herself for consolation, faced with Mrs. Hofferson's continued perplexity at her daughter's inability to master even a single hearty Viking dish.

Prompted by the memory, Astrid harrumphed out loud into the silence—Toothless's tail twitched at the disturbance. She'd concluded some time ago that a warrior didn't need a fine palate. She would work on her cooking skills now for appearances and for her husband's health, but she'd never be a culinary genius. Berk would have to be content with her yaknog. That, at least, disappeared extremely quickly every year. One minute she'd put out the decorated cauldron full of noggy goodness—Fishlegs or somebody would drag her off to try some cake or to dance, she'd come back fifteen minutes later and the pot would be empty, and Phlegma or someone would be taking it away to clean it and would congratulate her on another great recipe. The clean pot would resurface shortly, to sit beneath the table or repurposed to hold more punch or ale or mead. It was all very gratifying to Astrid. She must have started to take the recipe in the right direction at some point; none of her friends had complained to her about it in years.

Except for Hiccup, but that was because he had agreed (well, she'd _persuaded _him, anyway) to be her taste tester, and even he usually managed to list at least one improvement over the previous year's version. He was the only one who never outright complimented her on each year's offering. She was beginning to suspect there might be something wrong with his taste buds. But…her beloved was out of the ordinary in so many ways; maybe his sense of taste was different too.

The thought of her specialty drink inexplicably filled her with fresh nausea this time, and she decided to wait on the morning meal, contenting herself with downing a mug of water from the clay jug by the washbasin. Maybe she would feel more up to eating after she'd gone into the woods for a maintenance workout. Damned if pregnancy was going to slow her arm or dull her aim.

As she made for the stairs to go up and retrieve her clothes, though, a very strange sound started coming through the bedroom door. It sounded almost like…singing, but wordless and gurgly. She slunk up the stairs carefully and peered through the crack left by the opened bedroom door; still confused, she entered the room and saw Hiccup, now awake, lying on his back and crooning at the ceiling.

"_What are you doing?" _she demanded. "That sounds…awful."

Hiccup closed his mouth, turned his head, and smiled at her. The odd sounds continued, now recognizable as those of Terrible Terrors perched on the roof outside.

"I'm tired of our morning battle with the little squawkers," he said. "I figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

"Gods," said Astrid, "The shock of last night must have really gone to your head. You're losing it."

"I lost it a long time ago," Hiccup replied. "There's a time lag. You're only just now finding out."

"Apparently."

Astrid climbed back onto the bed and knelt next to him. They studied one other briefly in the dim morning light, each cautiously wondering what might be going through the other's head.

Astrid was feeling mildly exultant, as she often did when seeing Hiccup sleep-disheveled and hearing his croaky morning voice. Everyone else viewed him primarily as the hero of Berk, the former screwup who had made good. She alone (and Toothless and now Valka, she admitted, a bit resentfully), got to see him all awkward in the morning, not a bit heroic or glamorous.

Hiccup was thinking, _Holy mother of Thor, we're having a baby. _

He smiled at Astrid again, a genuine, brilliant smile devoid of apprehension. He'd had one of those rare nights where the pleasure of his good dreams had outweighed the horror of the bad ones; he'd woken up feeling warm inside, and a little giddy, the sensations temporarily overriding the previous feelings of panic that had bubbled up with each thought of Astrid's pregnancy. Those feelings would return later, he was sure of it; he was determined to enjoy this moment while it lasted.

Astrid leaned over and kissed his forehead, nose, and mouth. Then she reached out and pulled at the slightly greasy, off-kilter strands of his bed-mussed hair. "You need a haircut," she said. "Again."

"Oh, I don't know," he replied, and twirled one of the braids she'd put in. He blinked at her flirtatiously. "I was thinking I'd grow it out long, see if I can get it to rival Tuffnut's—" Astrid's dismayed head shake shut him up.

"What's gotten into you this morning?" she asked.

The beaming expression on his face was _too _innocent.

"I think," he replied, "the better question is, what's gotten into you? And do you think we're having a boy or a girl?"

She balled her hand up to sock him for his cheekiness, and he winced in preparation for the inevitable.

But Astrid hesitated, feeling conflicted and uncharacteristically reluctant to make contact. This was the father of her child. Did she really want to set an example for the kid that included marital violence?

Waiting proved unwise: Hiccup clasped her wrists and pulled her down on top of him, rolled over quickly so she was tangled in the blankets. He grinned at her. "Pregnancy is making you distracted," he said, and bent his head to kiss her.

Astrid's head shot forward and she whacked him in the nose with her forehead—not hard enough to really damage him, but he leapt back off of her, looking surprised and hurt.

"Ow!"

She smiled at him with a mixture of affection and smugness. "Idiot." She sat up, pulled his hand away from his face and inspected his nose. "You're okay, right?"

"No thanks to you," he complained. "What was that for?"

"You tried to pin me," said Astrid. "No one pins me down. Especially not you."

"Hmm," replied Hiccup, glancing at the silver wedding ring she wore. "I think I did, actually."

Astrid hit the bed covers with a frustrated fist. It wasn't fair. She pulled her punches now where he was concerned, and yet he insisted on outwitting her without mercy.

"How do you _do_ that?" she griped. "Do you keep a list of snarky comebacks in reserve? A catalog of quips, one for every occasion? What's your secret?"

It was subtle; a mild tensing of the eyes and mouth, but she caught it.

"Practice," he said.

"Yeah, well," said Astrid, and pointed at the corresponding band on his hand, redirecting the conversation. "That pinning thing…it goes both ways."

"Sure does," he agreed. "And you're my very favorite person to be pinned down by."

Astrid frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Um…it means you're my very favorite wife? My only wife? I love you?"

"Uh-hunh, okay," said Astrid. "You'll pay for that one later."

Hiccup flopped back down onto the bed. "I think I should pay for it now. I've never gotten myself ravaged by a pregnant woman before. It might be fun."

"Wait a second," she said, incredulous. "What part of 'six weeks along' didn't you understand? Have you forgotten what we tried last Thor's Day? And just a second ago I was thinking you were the smart one…"

Hiccup blushed and said, "Fine. I've never _knowingly_ gotten myself ravaged by a pregnant woman."

"That's more like it…" Astrid smirked, and swung her leg over to sit upright over him, straddling his lap. She ran her hands down his sides—he reached up and squeezed her hips, pressing her close against him, his breath quickening, lips parted in anticipation. His hands came up to her waist, and he tried to pull her forward. She resisted him gently and smiled, knowing it would frustrate him, make him try harder, and her insides began to tighten. It was familiar now: the heady awareness that she was wanted, but the feeling was still potent. She gloried in it. She felt triumphant, hungry...she gave in to his tugging, leaned forward to kiss him—his mouth was soft and sweet, and she sighed in delight. She would enjoy this. _They_ would enjoy it.

Her gut tightened again; in a different way, this time, much less pleasant.

"Urk," she said abruptly, and jumped off the bed. "I…I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere." She dashed for the washstand in the corner, covering her mouth.

Hiccup moaned. _This is going to be a long Winter, isn't it, _he thought, and hauled himself out of bed to be available for help.


End file.
